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GAUNTLET: Slayer Edition Launches for Playstation 4 and PC today!

Ah, adventurers! Welcome! I am Morak, the only wizard powerful enough to have summoned the Gauntlet.I have seen the likes of you many times. For decades I have held the Gauntlet, watching bones of fools past turn into dust. Let’s see if you stay alive any longer than those that came before.You’re not scared, are you? Welcome then, to the stage of your deaths! You have not seen what new horrors lurk in the darkness below yet.

In our previous blog posts we’ve outlined some of the improvements coming with Gauntlet: Slayer Edition. For a number of months we have been working hard to shape the game into what we fully envisioned and today we are proud and excited to get to share the experience with you.

Today Gauntlet: Slayer Edition is available to purchase from the PlayStation store for $19.99. You can become one of the courageous adventurers that take their chances braving the Gauntlet.

Since the first release in 2014, Gauntlet has received many improvements. The key points we have addressed are Hero depth, gameplay variation and overall richer visuals. Below you can find a full list of all the new features and updates to existing ones.

ABILITIES

New Hero Weapon Abilities and Customization

Heroes can now change their special abilities (The ones represented by the big shiny icon in your HUD with a cooldown) by equipping different weapons.
Each Hero has a total of 4 weapons that alter their abilities.

For the Warrior and Valkyrie this means swapping out their Special Ability (Spin attack & Shield Throw) for another type of attack.

For the Necromancer this means swapping out her summoning ability for another one (like summon archers or summon ghosts).

For the Elf, this means giving him 2 new abilities – a new bomb, as well as a new bomb shot ability.

For the Wizard, this means swapping out one of his schools of magic (fire, lightning or ice) for another one, giving him 3 new abilities.

New Unique Potion Abilities for each Hero

All Heroes start with 1 potion ability unique to them, and can unlock 2 more in the shop (this replaces one of the Relic-slots, so players can now only carry 1 Relic).
Potion abilities are massive, high-impact abilities that can turn the tide of battle in your favour.

More use of Relics

Relics no longer cost potions to use, but are instead limited by a cooldown. This means that players get to use their relic more often, making them a bigger part of how you play.
The functionality of some relics has been changed, for balancing-and-fun reasons.

MONSTERS

New Monster Types

There are a couple of new Monster types lurking in the Gauntlet.

Improved Monster Visuals, Audio and Abilities

Several monsters have gotten updated models, textures and animations, as well as updated abilities and changes to behaviour.

GAME MODE FEATURES

New Game Mode: Endless

A mode where you fight your way through procedurally generated floors, trying to get as far (and as rich) as you can.

Colosseum becomes a daily challenge

There will be one Colosseum arena available to play at any given time.
It changes every day, and each arena has a cape that can be unlocked by beating it, as well as a gold reward for beating it for the first time that day.
These will still be the same arenas as the old Colosseum and the same Capes, giving new players a chance to earn the Capes from past seasons.

New Campaign Map

The Hub Room has been replaced by a Campaign Map, letting players choose freely between levels that they have unlocked.

Improved Environment Visuals

Campaign levels and procedural floors have had major art improvements, making environments more varied and diverse.

New Loadout / Shop

The in-game Shop has been replaced by a Loadout in the Lobby / Character Select Screen.
This allows all 4 local players to customize their Heroes simultaneously and streamlines customization to be included in all game modes.

Difficulty Rebalancing

Reduced number of difficulty settings from 4 to 3 (removed the easiest difficulty, leaving the old “Hard”-difficulty as the new “Normal”).
There are now Skull Coins to find and pick up in the levels.

Now we’re really looking forward to joining you in the dungeons, watching your struggles and success and finally being able to share our game with the PlayStation audience.

Come and Invade the Darkness with us! (and please ask any questions or comment below and I’ll be around to read)

Hey Malin! I absolutely love this game! A big thanks to all of you at Arrowhead for all of you hard work and dedication to create such amazing co-op experiences! I went ahead and sent you a PM to the Arrowhead page on Facebook check it out when you can :)
Congratulations on the release of Gaunlet Slayer Edition!

Thank you so much for the kind praise! It always makes the team so happy. We’re hoping to create many more co-op games for years to come :)
I will make sure to go through all messages an emails just as soon as I can.

Malin

Johnathan Williams

Any time Malin you all deserve it!

Toiletborstel

Does this game have public matchmaking on PS4, or must one invite his/ her friends? Would be nice if you could play this with ‘random’ people. None of my friends own it. It looks good and I want to try it out haha.

cusman

You can set your game to Public and you can join others that have it set to Public. I haven’t done this as I am lucky from playing Helldivers to have number co-op loving gaming friends that were mutually interested in picking up Gauntlet to play together, but I can at least answer your question that those options exist.

Toiletborstel

thanks, will buy it then :)

cusman

Malin, really enjoyed what I played of Gauntlet Slayer Edition on PS4 so far. Please pass on my feedback that I think the game really needs a way for friends to browse and join each others games from within the game.

If the option already exists, none of us have figured it out yet and are relying on PS4 Party Chat to party up, pick host, and then have host send out the invites and then other players interested in joining are able to join the Party Chat and request and invite. We don’t all start playing at same time which is why drop in / drop out is important for such games, but we do want to be able to play with each other when 2 or more of us are on at the same time.

Also when partied up via the Invites, don’t break us up when we decide to switch between modes. So if we move from Colosseum to Campaign to Endless in whatever order, don’t make us have to re-invite and re-join on the host.

This is something we will discuss, but would require a lot of resources. At the moment players are able to invite their friends through the system friends menu, as you are aware, but we realize that it can sometimes be frustrating to communicate. If you were able to drop into a friends only game, would that be a reasonable compromise as a workaround?

– Peon

cusman

I’ll take any improvement on how friends can join on each other I can get. Doing the invites is tedious, especially when we switch game modes. Also if in middle of level with Death chasing us, and friend comes on and wants to join, have to risk Death and try getting the invite done with the start menu.

If instead of Make Public, there was option to make open for Friends, and then friends could drop in on their own accord that would be sufficient. If the Quick match put you in any Friends game instead of specific one, that would be fine for now as I don’t have a whole lot of us (3-5 max) trying to play at the same time.

If the friend list of Gauntlet players grows to Helldivers levels (50+), than that wouldn’t work and we would need to be able to browse and select the friend we intend to join.

Vinnnie

Excellent game and a nice upgrade from the previous version. Please keep adding new content to this game so its popularity continues to grow. I do miss the mastery bonuses

Thank you! It’s great that people like the improvements, we really have a lot more fun with it now ourselves.

In our first step (as you may already know) we decreased the damage-bonus and damage-resistances from the masteries system to make the damage-bonuses symbolic more than anything, and to shift the focus away from grinding and toward skill instead. We want Gauntlet to be a game where skill ultimately determines how successful you are, rather that character stats grinding.

The next natural step was to get rid of the masteries system altogether, which we felt never quite fit our design philosophy and contributed to the game anyway.
I hope that you and most players will appreciate this version more in the end! It feels more right to us :)

– Malin

Vinnnie

I totally understand. All the people who I have been playing on the ps4 with so far are really enjoying it. Keep adding content and cool rewards and this game will have a great lifespan.

lenshosaurio

After helldivers, now i’m like “Arrowhead Game Studios …. damn where is my wallet?”

shubham kumar

Is there any chance for Gauntlet Slayer Edition to come out on playstation vita?

Gauntlet is not a first party game with Sony like Helldivers is, so it would be a matter between Warner Bros and Sony if they wanted to discuss it. It is quite a massive work however to get a game to work well with cross-play and all.

John Keiler

I’d like to provide you with some constructive feedback here, if possible. For starters, I was an avid Gauntlet player for quite awhile and between and after multiple resets have held several world top scores (when we had those for each level back in 1.0!) I mostly play wizard (over 100 hours of wizardry!), and for a time was one of the best. I really liked the game and dedicated a lot of time to it.
I feel that overall, this update did much more harm than good for the PC version of Gauntlet. Keep in mind I have only played Gauntlet on PC and am only making this feedback directed at the PC version. A lot of the issues are the team at arrowhead ‘fixing what isn’t broken’, so to speak. But it’s not all bad. After my first 10 points, I will also elucidate ways in which this update has breathed new life into Gauntlet. Allow me to elaborate:
Outstanding issues, in no particular order:
1. The Lobby – It was fine the way it was. I’m sure many designers worked hard to make this lobby, and it really showed! It was well designed and aesthetically pleasant, and better in every way than the current ‘map’. When previewing cosmetics, you didn’t have a selection window over half of your character, and spells and weapons could be tested immediately in the lobby area. It was also exactly like the original gauntlet lobbys, which is appropriate for a game riding on the success of original gauntlet titles. Now we have a goofy map system that is worse than the Lobby, and bears no resemblance to the Gauntlet Franchise. The lobby should be restored.
2. The Camera – Many players complained about the camera in 1.0, so I understand the struggle. It may seem like players just can’t be pleased. But I assure you the issue is now worse. You should restore the 1.0 camera if possible.
3. Masteries – Now, I understand your approach in a way, because now new players can hop right into the game and not have to “level up” to be worth bringing into unfair mode (which has now, sadly, been removed…) with their friends. Some complain that this has removed character development, and while I agree, I think the would-be benefit of instant access could be preferable, but…. We no longer have the benefits we once had from masteries. The wizard’s bubble, the valkyries wings, need to return ASAP, either as an unlock (1.0) or as default (2.0) – and Unfair mode needs to return, so that we may make use of these advantages.
4. Unfair Difficulty – not only is the name “Unfair” more interesting and inspired than “Hard” but removing a higher difficulty and as such, content from your game, is never a good idea. This difficulty needs to return, harder than ever, to give your veterans what they crave. While “Easy, Normal, Hard” may be easier to understand for your console audience (on second thought, that’s kind of insulting!) the difficulty names lack inspiration and only serve to bore the player both in name and gameplay.
5. Weapons – We have pros and cons here. Some would complain that attaching abilities to weapons locks players into a certain cosmetic style, and while I would agree, I would also contest that it’s worth it for the new abiltiies. Or it would be if… They were any good. A majority of the new weapon abilities can’t match up to the original weapon sets, and need to be retuned or redesigned. Additionally, these weapons don’t have to even be earned or unlocked in higher difficulties anymore, further watering down the game and reducing the feelings of achievement and character development, which brings me to my next point.
6. Difficulty-based Unlocks – Attaching weapon unlocks (preferably those that can be seen as improvements) to higher difficulties adds content, direction, and character progression. This needs to return.
7. Coliseum Mode – Could already be laggy, but is now a less accessible random grab-bag of maybe-content than the cool new periodic content it was before. This should be reverted, as the current state can genuinely only be seen as worse.
8. Endless Mode – The only genuinely new content here, and even then it still leaves much to be desired. I’d say that just adding this to 1.0 alone would have been better overall than 2.0 as a whole, but even then this mode need work. It’s not random enough and reuses too-familiar level platforms and worst of all, overuses Death. This should focus more on infinite waves than infinite floors (or maybe both) and should not contain Death at all. Consider having an Endless Dungeon (infinite floors) and a Last Stand (1 big, big room. Infinite monsters come in “waves”).
8. Gold – there is still no good use for excess gold (I have millions left over from 1.0) and at first I thought the purchasable items in endless mode would require this gold (neat!) when in fact they only use gold acquired in endless. Maybe consider incorporating both your gold stash and an endless-only currency(score?) into its progression.
9. Music – The old intro/menu music had a much better and more retro feel, and made the player hyped the moment they started up. It was a great track, wonderfully composed, and probably took a lot of work….where is it? (bring it back)
And finally,
10. End-floor Score card – this didn’t need to be changed. It was fun to see kills and gold together, our total score, and how we compared to the champion for that floor. I strongly recommend reverting this. In the future, please consider not changing fully-functioning components of a game for the sake of it.

Bonus: Wizard Specific Feedback – I have found that overall, the original spellbook offers more advantages than the other weapons in every situation. Some of the weapons are close however, and could easily be tuned to be worth using:
– The Mystic Sphere, for example: Repeater Bolts – could use a little knockback like fireball, but not bad. Storm Barrage – it’s cool, but I don’t really understand its purpose. Probably needs a lower CD. Rift Jump – a genuine downgrade from the old teleport in every way. Random, unreliable, poor damage. It should be just like flame serpents, but deal damage instantly instead of over time, if it deals damage at all. Make it at least land where you’re pointing, and go the same distance.
– Sinister Sentience: Hellfire – so far, this spell is not in any way better than ice beam. It’s cute, but moves too slow and has too small a range. Ice beam is the better spell here. Searing Blast – Why bother? the damage is ok but the range is short. Mortar is better for small aoe damage and flash freeze has more utility. Burning Orb – awkward, damage is low, and I can’t really find a use for it. I’d rather Slow Orb the enemies and mortar/chain lightning. – It seems like this the the “all out damage” book, sacrificing utility for damage. This is a good idea, but poorly executed.
– The Hollow Chapters: Dark Torrent – Awesome kiting/CC ability, well designed. Vacuum – A great idea, but awkward and difficult to use. Needs to be more reliable and powerful (not in damage, but in range, etc). Invisibility – awesome spell, and is what makes this book good enough to be worth using it. Yes, you can chain this ability, but you can’t attack while invisible. I don’t recommend nerfing it too hard, as its what makes this book shine. I can see here that you intended to make this the utility book, and you definitely succeeded.

The Good!:
– You have made several visual changes to the levels, and graphical updates. I can tell that the levels now look and feel exactly the way you always wanted them to, and it shows. The levels are fantastic, and in their department I couldn’t ask for more.
– Endless mode is a step in the right direction, it could be really cool!
– The new enemies are varied and exciting, and really freshened up the game. They can be cheap and annoying sometimes in their own way (but i sense that’s intentional!) but are all unique and challenging. In my experience so far, there is really no change necessary in this department.
– Visually, the new title screen looks awesome, and has a lot more depth than the original.

In Conclusion, please consider the feedback I’ve posted here and many players have posted around the net – don’t just write it off. I think it would really benefit the game to go back on several of these changes, or tune some of those that have already been made.
– Take inspiration from the Diablo III developers, who after player feedback, removed their in-game auction house, a centerpiece of Diablo III. It takes guts to make a decision like that, but it genuinely saved the game, and they’ll forever be respected for going back on their design.
– Take Inspiration from D3 devs again, because their Console and PC versions are totally separate. They don’t ship their console changes to PC like you have done with Slayer Edition, and the result is 2 better games.
– Don’t forget Gauntlet is still overall a fantastic game (though maybe it was better in 1.0?) and you’ve deserved every dollar you’ve made so far, and many more. Don’t forget that player feedback (while not always constructive) doesn’t mean the game is bad – we just want it to be perfect (you’ve earned it!)
– If you’ve made it this far, thanks for taking the time to read this. I’d love to see Gauntlet be the best it can be.

zid

I think this is one of the best, fairest, politest and most constructive critique posts I’ve ever read ever (save for some of my own of course hehe). Kudo’s for being a decent person.

I’d like to thank you as well for this well written piece of feedback and I can tell you’ve put thought in it and taken a lot of time to compose your text. It’s wonderful to see that some people can still be constructive and polite when giving negative feedback on the web :)

We’re always happy to hear back from players and being able to have an open communication and explain what and why we do things.
I can’t give you too many answers as I’m not a designer of Gauntlet, but I will alert the team and ask them to have a look. And also can’t promise what might or might not be changed, there are so many factors like time, budget, other projects, publisher decisions etc. But if we don’t have the chance to change things now, at least we’ve learnt more for the next game!

About a couple of things;

Masteries:
In our first step, before Slayer Edition, we decreased the damage-bonus and damage-resistances from the masteries system to make the damage-bonuses symbolic more than anything, and to shift the focus away from grinding and toward skill instead. We want Gauntlet to be a game where skill ultimately determines how successful you are, rather that character stats grinding.
The next natural step was to get rid of the masteries system altogether, which we felt never quite fit our design philosophy and contributed to the game anyway. It would probably have been easier to not have them from start and balance the rest from that.

Unfair mode:
You do mention that Hard mode is very hard now, and the thing is that we didn’t remove Unfair mode, but reduced the number of difficulties and renamed it to Hard. The old Hard is the new Normal, and we removed the easiest difficulty.

Perhaps these other dev blogs about the Slayer Edition changes will be interesting to you if you haven’t read them already:

I’m unsure if there is another section that this should be written in as I’m currently in the game using steam overlay, can’t really navigate as easy as chrome.

I agree with John Keiler about all he’s mentioned. I bought gauntlet and played it alone then invited all my friends to play it also because i enjoyed it so so much and even started to play with random people online an in the coluseum when friends were not on.

I’ve recently came back to play it again and have noticed multiple things that i wouldn’t have changed and as John says feels like you’ve simply removed content completely.

First is the masteries. I liked the masteries, it was a reward for playing the game the longer you played the more powerful you became meaning you could play higher difficulties. If anything the route i would have prefered the game to go here would be to increase the masteries levels and add in more difficulties not remove them. It just feels like all the time i’ve played means nothing now.
Yes, this means new people can come in as a fresh start and possibly play the hardest setting, but theres no progression anymore now, And that makes me very very sad for the game. It’s like what World of Warcraft did to ruin there game, they made everything to easy to access. Back in the day when the game was in it’s prime you had to work for things, it was hard to get there, but the more time you put into the game the better you got and the more things you got as a rewards

If anything I would like to see masteries return, a good balance to the game would be to add back in a harder difficulty like another ‘unfair’, because you should NEVER be able to join a game fresh and have any chance at the hardest difficulty regardless of how ‘skilled’ you are. This is just boring to the max for me and possibly alot of other people. This will kill the longevity of your game, there is no progression now other than the different floors you have to complete.

Money and items should have had an overhaul. Like John says, you should only be able to get certin items / weapons from harder difficulties or lower floors (to add a feeling of progression).

Infact what you have done from removing masteries and such is made it so that a player doesn’t need to play you game to get better. They can repeat over and over and over again the first floor level and get all the gold they want, all the upgrades they want and never need to see the second level. There is no requirement to progress through the game.

The difficulties as they are seem fine, but i would like a harder setting now, Hard as far as i’ve played it is very very hard but it isn’t stupid hard or next to impossible anymore. I think the difficulty here has come from not having the life saving bonus from masteries, like the valkerys wings ect.

I enjoy this game still don’t get me wrong, but i did spend a good 5 minutes looking to see if there was a legacy option somewhere inside to revert these changes.

This is exactly like what John above mentioned himself, you’ve tried to Fix things that were not broken and broke them. This brings me onto the lobby system.

The previous lobby when you are running around testing out your abilities and characters waiting for the party leader to stand in the doorway was the best thing i’ve seen for a game like this. There are so, so many lobby system out there like the one you have implamented. However the BIGGEST PROBLEM with it is the scrolling. You’ve taken a very intuitive and fun area where you select the zone you want to go to from running into the door after you’ve tested your character into a “scroll scroll scroll scroll scroll scroll… Wait no i want the other one scroll scroll scroll scroll…” BORING…

I really hope you change these points back, there are other points like how come monsters are slightly overpowered, like the skeleton archer than makes its minions invincible… How do you kill it when it’s surrounded on hard mode? seriously ? … this makes it feel like you have to rush in and kill it before the other minions spawn so you can stand a chance. This is Forced Gameplay and is crap IMO but i can live with it because is one mod, There are others but I don’t mind them as much as this one.

If you read this at all and say if you can only change one thing, I would want the masteries back. That is the main thing that I miss so much, the game has no point to me now once you’ve reached the end of the last level. There is no reason to go back and progress your character anymore. Why should i go back and just FARM MONEY, which by the way takes AGES, to get items that i dont’ need to complete the game on hardest difficulty because there is no need for the items to complete it as you’ve balanced it all out around the base characters ?… Masteries fixed this, the more masteries you have the better chance you have of widthstanding the highest difficulties. Add in more difficulties and more masteries.

In short, i feel you’ve took this opportunity to remove so much content just to balance the game to a fesh starting character and shafted all the people who have played so far, enjoyed the struggle to gain masteries to play the hardest levels. It’s just a Plain game mechanic now. I still enjoy it and will be playing for years to come on and off still probably. But without the progression and requirement of masteries I won’t be recommending this game to any more people because it’s not worth it anymore.

You’ve gave it Diablo-itus, farm this same few levels for no pupose.

I liked the other version before this more, Please add things back in you’ve taken out.

Also, slightly intoxicated as I’m amidst a gaming session with friends and we started on this game and I realy really wanted to voice my thoughts, so apologies if ther are spelling errors and this comes out as gobblydgook…

-nora

soufwar

I started playing Gauntlet like 4days ago. I am on the PS4 version and I have to say that while playing in a party of friends, I enjoyed it. Furthermore, I don’t think I’ll keep playing it after I finish getting all its trophies. It doesn’t have any meaning to it; don’t get me wrong I like so far. But when I get my last platinum trophy that’ll be it.

WallyMartin

I never seen it mentioned, and I guessing the answer is no. Is it possible for people on Steam/Xbox/Ps4 to all play in the same game?

There’s no support on the systems to let Steam and PS4 players be in the same game from what I know. Not so sure about Xbox as we have never developed for that platform.

WallyMartin

Ahh thanks for the reply.

I was hoping with FF14 and Diablo 3, that it was hopefully getting easier for devs to achieve this. However most of those all probably go to external servers and had massive teams working on the networking code.

I believe you have to have your own underlying system that allows players to log in and connect to each other, like Blizzards battle.net. It’s not something we can supply with our small scale studio though. As you say, huge teams and resources are behind those titles.

Vinnnie

any chance of adding treasure rooms / secret rooms levels to endless mode like the old Gauntlets also the red dragon would be nice too like the old Gauntlet 2 game

Keanu Wong

Finally, it is available in Asia, few days ago. Probably I will purchase it by today or tomorrow. It seems that there are no “level up” system in Gauntlet. I know everything can be purchase in game by finding gold while fighting through it. I am a helldivers player, I really enjoy the game and the level up thing in the game. How about separate the items into 2, like some we could buy them with gold, and some we could get them by level up the character like how helldivers works ? I know they are two different games, but i guess helldivers would like to level them up too in Gauntlet. No matter what, I still love you guys, you guys are so responsive to players’ comment, and do really make change to fulfil all of us ! Thank you for delivering us these bunch of great games !

Thanks for your feedback and the kind words! I can’t promise we’ll make any changes to how you unlock items, as it would probably require quite a bit of work, but I’ll let the rest of the team know so it can be considered.

cusman

Feedback about Gauntlet
Pros
1. Each class plays very differently. Even within each class, changing your weapon can influence you play style greatly
2. Party is forced to pick no more than 1 of each class. It forces groups of friends to find favorites or be flexible about trying something different
3. Colosseum mode is what makes me boot up the game each day. I love skill based challenges, and procedurally generated gameplay content.
4. I enjoyed the main campaign levels and Hard was certainly a stand out on difficulty. Especially that final boss
5. Endless mode is great for long-term replayability
6. Gold based unlock system and the Gold Crown worth +500 for each floor completed for person wearing that on completion. Provides extra enjoyment when playing with friends.

Cons
1. Grind Masteries and Grind Trophies. One of the worst examples of a game that expects it to be played more for grind than anything else in my history as a gamer. 15000 Orc kills by single hero? Really? At time all my “skill” based trophies are done, I was at around 2000 Orc kills. I also have almost all the Colosseum Capes for my most played class of Hero. I reached 50k kills with my main hero and don’t have any of the individual Kill x amount of enemies trophies. Your game is very poorly tuned on the expected number of kills for the various enemy types and the skill it takes to complete game on Hard and reach level 50 of Endless and get all the Capes from Colosseum. Also what’s with the “with 1 hero” on these grind kill masteries and trophies. This discourages player to play with variety of classes. If you didn’t require each class of hero to beat all Hard levels or reach Floor 50 for those masteries, then why not count kills across all heroes for those kill masteries as well?
2. No browsing for multiplayer, so if looking for Endless to join, can’t see ahead of time whether you would be able to go in an use your intended class of Hero.
3. No ability to switch Public vs Private once already in Endless mode
4. No ability to set to Friends where any friend can join at will without having to be invited
5. Endless needs more teleport jump stops between floors. I think something like every 10 floors would be better instead of being at 19, 37, 55, etc.
6. Gold only retains collecting value long term in the Endless Mode with the option to use Gold to buy Health, Potion, etc at the start of each level. Then again, there isn’t much reason to replay campaign levels once you have beaten everything on Hard.

zid

OK Between the work you’ve put into this and the communication here I think you just sold me a copy.

Michael Croft

Ever since the last update on ps4. My game crashes on endless mode either when i quit the game or lose my last life. The game seems to freeze.

I tried deleting everything including save data and doing a complete reinstall. My save data is still showing in the game menus and will not delete even i have deleted it. I am not on the cloud either. I only use local saves on the hdd.

Hi Michael, apologies for the late reply. Sometimes a comment here might slip us by and the best way to reach us for support is email. Has it been working better for you now or are you still seeing the same situation?

Over the last 3 weeks Gauntlet freezes upon the successful completion of a map in any mode. I have reinitialized my PS4 and reinstalled the game with no luck. Can anyone help? The crashes have made the game unplayable for the four of us. #NeedFixBadly

As the issue is the game is freezing at the completion of a level/board the app is not crashing. I am having to force close the app to remedy. Is there a way to capture why an app is forced to close?

ScottieMagic

I have this game for the PS4 and over the past several weeks, the game freezes up on the completion of any game mode map. I’ve uninstalled the game and reinstalled. I’ve saved the game data to the cloud and redownloaded it. It still freezes up which is very frustrating when my whole family plays together. Any solutions or thoughts on this? Thank you. ScottieMagic

I’ve really been enjoying and so has the family. After talking so much about Gauntlet over the years everyone was truly unimpressed and bored with Diablo III. I found myself explaining the difference between a button smasher and Ultima/story based game, but we wanted a ‘button smasher’. Slayer Edition fit the bill and succeeded expectations. The players are equally fun and have unique strategy, much of which is not easily discovered at first and only realized on levels above 20 on hard. The wizard has been exceptionally fun and challenging; the margin of error when spelling chaining is a small one and really livens things up – I’ve found that chaining: invisibility, void vacuum, ice shard, flaming serpent and then a follow-up with fire bomb or fireball will take out very large groups of seemingly unstoppable numbers. Nice job guys.

I do need some HELP however… Please help so I can continue stealing my loved one’s food and gold !

When manually ending the game on endless or just dying “naturally” things lock up on my PS4. I’ve restarted ensuring nothing else is running and also deleted/re-installed with no avail. It only locks up when playing above level 20 on hard and is very frustrating as you an imagine since no progress or coinage is saved since the app has to be manually closed. Any suggestions? Thanks!

Hi John, sorry for the delay in response over the Christmas vacation :) Thank you for the kind words about the game – I’m happy to hear that you are enjoying Gauntlet, apart from the problem which you mention. We will investigate the cause of the crash on the PS4 and update you as soon as we know what is causing it and when it will be fixed :)

Thank you. I/we have still managed to wield my way (with my wife) nearly to the 90 flr portal. It does save opened portals ok :-) We would live to create a video short for you and have many ideas for somewhat simple addons. There does appear to be interest. Cheers!

Sandra Zerva

Terrible news. I have the freezing after map completions too, so the only way to play endless was to select “give up” when the last life was in use. Since today, it froze even when selecting give up. Lost 50k that way, bleeh. But thats not even why I write. Since today, The game doesnt even start properly anymore either, the first screen with Gauntlets title appears, and thats all. Then after like 30 sec comes a message “application couldnt be started”. In german though since im german.

And yes I have 3 suggestions which together form one concept. Although I guess the game is too old now for changes and you will be busy with other games. Anyway.
Alongside of all the bugs, the game has one problem, one single problem: motivation.
This game is literally over after campaign. Its why most people stop playing it soon.
The long time motivation for me is just to collect gold. Even if thats pointless after buying everything.
In my opinion this game could easily be given a long time motivation by three features that are one feature. Give us rank titles to work for!!
There should be a hierarchy of ranks such as
Little slayer, slayer, great slayer, relentless slayer, dungeon master, etc. These are in an order. The title is grey with various pale colors which stand for monsters. People have to different monsters all the time so no monotonous grinding. Which colors the titles come with is randomly generated individually but always 2 orange ones. The plaersy have to kill (letter color)
Red – mummies
Yellow – orc
Grey – grunt
Blue – spider
violet – cultists
Pink – demons
Brown – objects
Green – whatever they want
White: this is only a blank color to even out the lenght of titles

Grind until a player awards the title. Letter by letter is highlighted white, green, blue, red, etc then. No specific order which letter to go for, can be wirking on several, some kills for blue here, some kills for yellow there. Every title also has orange letters that can only be paid with gold, so if some cheaters use specific corners to ” farm” monsters, well, gold cant be farmed :)

To award a single letter (make it highlight) a player has to kill 10k monsters.
So, the title of little slayer for instance contains 12 letters,to complete /highlight this title, 120k kills.
After a map, the kill counter now gets a purpose too: kills are all 1 gold bonus. So 445 kills = 445 gold extra.
And that is the point where gold urgently needs to receive a purpose too, as said, its for orange letters.
Once reaching 1 million gold, the gold should be auto-subtracted and therefore light up 1 orange letter.
So people kill and collect to light up the letters.
Even if you’d make up a hierarchy of only 10 titles, and every title would consist of only 10 letters, that would keep people busy, because thats 1 million kills.

I tried to think up a change that I suppose is more simple to program than luxurious new worlds.
I love the game and I wish people stay interested in it, because as it currently is, people find it repetive and pointless because it provides little reason to repeat maps that have been completed.

I think this grind system would be prettty fun. And every 20th lich it should say : “Youre a true champion! Kills count twice next 5 minutes!”
Same to spider queen.

Thank you for taking the time to explain your suggestions :) While there are some good ideas in there, as you noted yourself, development is over so it is unlikely we will be adding additional changes to the game. Doesn’t hurt to take note of the suggestions though, as we never know when we may need some inspiration! :)

In regards to the freezing and crashing problem, we are looking into that now and seeing if we can fix it. Hopefully we can get it sorted and if there’s any news we will be sure to let people know. Sorry!

Chris Blaby

Please fix ps4 crashes. They are still happening as of the most current firmware (3.xx) as of this post. We love this game so please make it bug free or if not your code then make sure Sony fixes their ps4 OS to run it property. it hangs the ps4 on level competition for us mid way threw on hard, we can not finish any farther which sucks. We have tried several times with the same result upon completion of the legal. Do not let any platform ruin the gauntel legacy. I so far am not happy with this purchased game for this reason and this reason only, otherwise love the game. Keep making great games!